Tired of brutality, Syrians taking up arms

Wednesday

Sep 28, 2011 at 12:01 AMSep 28, 2011 at 10:21 AM

BEIRUT - Once-peaceful Syrian protesters increasingly are taking up arms to fight a six-month military crackdown, frustrated that President Bashar Assad remains in control while more than 2,700 demonstrators are dead, analysts and witnesses say.

BEIRUT — Once-peaceful Syrian protesters increasingly are taking up arms to fight a six-month military crackdown, frustrated that President Bashar Assad remains in control while more than 2,700 demonstrators are dead, analysts and witnesses say.

The growing signs of armed resistance might accelerate the cycle of violence by giving the government an excuse to use even greater firepower against its opponents. Authorities already have used tanks, snipers and mafialike gunmen known as shabiha who operate as hired guns for the regime.

“If peaceful activism on the part of the protesters turns into violent insurgency, the risk of civil war will dramatically increase, and the regime will benefit and likely go for the kill,” said Bilal Saab, a Middle East expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.

In violence yesterday, Syrian forces backed by tanks and helicopters stormed into Rastan, a town of 40,000 north of Homs, to crush army deserters fighting back after months of mostly peaceful protests, residents said.

In a sign of increasingly heavily armed opposition to Assad, people in Homs said rebel soldiers hit a government tank with a rocket.

The degree to which Syrian protesters are arming themselves is difficult to quantify because Syria has banned foreign media and restricted local coverage. The state media echoes the party line, which states that the regime is fighting thugs and religious extremists who are acting out in a foreign conspiracy.

But interviews with a wide group of witnesses, activists and analysts suggest that the conflict is becoming more violent. Led by defecting army conscripts and Syrians with access to weapons smuggled in through neighboring Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon, protesters have begun taking up arms to fight back, observers say.

They are being aided by Sunni fighters returning from Iraq to their native Syria.

“Now these Syrian insurgents are returning to their country to help topple the Assad regime,” said Qassim al-Araji, a Shiite member of the Iraqi parliament’s defense and security committee. “We are happy to see these fighters leaving Iraq, saving us from their evils. But at the same time, we do not want major disturbances in neighboring Syria.”

A widespread armed revolt would be a major change. In many ways, the protest movement was modeled after the nonviolent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

But with the United Nations estimating that more than 2,700 civilians have died since the uprising began in mid-March, many protesters are starting to see the limits of a peaceful movement. The armed uprising in Libya that drove Moammar Gadhafi from power — albeit with NATO air support — provides a very different model of success.

Although the mass demonstrations in Syria have shaken one of the most authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, the opposition has made no major gains in recent months. It holds no territory and has no clear leadership.

“The regime is killing the people, and some residents are thinking that peaceful demonstrations will take them nowhere,” said one prominent Syrian activist.

Some Syrians now are urging foreign militaries to come to their aid, hoisting signs that say, “ Where is NATO?”